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De... I... I don't plan to go that far with AI rampancy...! Not for now at least...

The way I see it, it's like Tabane has a leash on the Silver Gospel AI and she's practically screwing around with the AI while also keeping it from going rouge entirely.

__________________

"You cannot be bad at watching a movie. You cannot be bad at listening to an album.
...But you can be bad at playing a videogame, and the game will punish you and deny you access to the rest of the videogame."

He could feel his consciousness growing faint, Croixas just making sense in his fading mind. Fighting against the darkness encroaching the edges of his vision, Rong willed himself to check on his situation. R: Evolution's power was down to 40%. It was possible to reroute them to the shields but it would leave him practically out of juice for anything else. He doubted he could take another hit from those cannons as well. The shielding was pretty out whack from that last hit.

Frustration began building in the boy. His fist closed tightly and he faintly registered the grip of the dagger still in his hand.

One shot.

Rong checked on the locations of his enemies. The one with the two daggers in its neck was holding him. Beside it was the monster he'd just beheaded. The one armed one was just a few dozen meters away. He could do it. One last burst of energy and he could completely annihilate these guys. That was the only option left to him this time.

"Then... here we go.", Rong closed his eyes.

BOOM!

The prisoner felt his insides resonate with the explosion. The hold on his ankle lost as he plummeted back into the water. Cold ocean embracing him whole and awakening his senses. Rong struggled to right himself and break the surface of the water. His eyes cleared of water only soon enough to watch a white IS come flying in to carve a deep diagonal gouge in the headless Golem's chest. The one that had been holding him was nowhere in sight.

Above him, four other IS whizzed by in no proper formation. A crimson unit bee-lined straight for the one armed unit with two katana in hand. Slashing repeatedly at the heavily damaged drone as it pitifully tried to fend off its attacker with one heavily armored arm.

Rong's attention was spent on them but it wasn't enough to take all of his senses as he quickly turned his remaining dagger against a presence coming from his blindspot. It came dangerously close to activating the AD over the throat of the pilot of a red violet unit. The flickering of blue energy telling Rong that the dagger's shield coating was doing its job in penetrating the standard defense.

It was a mistake on his part as the person whom he expected to be an enemy began to scream his ears off.

"What do you think you're doing!? We came all the way out here to save you and we get a knife to the neck as thanks? Are you an idiot or something?", came the tirade from the petite pilot of what looked to be in comparison, the hulking red violet unit.

"Save your complaints for later LingYin. Keep in mind we're in a combat situation. You can berate him after the operation.", interjected an even smaller girl in a similarly large IS frame. Only this time, the frame was in black.

The glare switched its target from Rong to the white-haired girl. "Tch, fine.", LingYin grunted roughly before plucking out the boy and R:Evolution out of the water like they weighed nothing.

As Rong was being pulled to a safer distance from all the fighting, he noticed two blondes who were supporting the sword fighters who had gone barreling in by providing covering fire. But those four were only engaged with two golems. Where was the third?

Rong turned to LingYin who was carrying him but she seemed to be in no mood to talk. Turning his vision, he saw the girl in the black IS frame. Her eyes were far away, attentive but piercing. It was almost like...

R:Evolution's sensors blared and it seemed his escorts got the same reading as well.

"We're locked!", the white haired girl screamed as she tackled both Rong and LingYin away from the stream of charged particles aimed for them. The blast was quickly followed by a second and even a third. The three of them were forced to scatter as LingYin lost her hold on Rong during the fourth blast.

Evenh as they dodged the beams, the girl in black IS still had her wits about her and triangulated the location of their enemy. "one and a half kilometers Northeast!", she screamed for her allies to hear.

The two others who were still frantically dodging beams brought up a magnified image of the specified area and were shocked.

"H-how is that thing even standing?"

Rong wondered similarly as he stared at the ruined frame. There was a hole blown in the Golem's chest, metal curled as if exploding outwards. A large chunk of its thick frame gouged out only with a small hole that peaked all the way through an exit wound at the back. Only one dagger was left in its neck, the other presumably lost in the explosion that claimed half the diameter of the appendage. The left arm was mostly whole, but its shoulder joint was barely able to support it. The right leg was blown clean off from the hip while the left leg only had a sparking stump of a knee remaining. It honestly looked like swiss cheese as threatened by those who were about to shoot someone.

So melee was the only choice. Rong realized this when he saw the white-haired girl hesitate to use the cannon that was following the black IS around. The recoil would be too powerful to shoot on the fly and setting up would take time they didn't have. Turning back to the opponent who was incredibly far off in a short amount of time, those two girls sported heavy meelee IS, the others were still busy in their fights. He had to decide this. Any longer and they'd eventually be shot down.

"Reroute power. Prepare for Overdrive."

"POWER REROUTING."

"One last burst.", Rong muttered as the tattered wings of R:Evolution straightened themselves out again. Time slowed down as the thirty-second burst of energy grazed by the trio. Rong saw how the two were struggling to regain control of the situation. The beads of water tossed up by the explosions on the water. He regained his trance and blasted off again. This time the wings which were severely damaged earlier clearly tore off. Whatever pain his innards were screaming out with before became negligible. Rong's mind was focused on one thing and as he sped across the water's surface the scattered dagger bits he'd lost responded to this single-minded will.

DESTROY THAT THING!

The speed was almost instantaneous. From zero to hypersonic in a lapse of 10 seconds. Suicidal by any stretch of human imagination. But that speed allowed for near instantaneous transportation. The golem was only able to fire two more shots before Rong rammed it. Sheer impact sending metal flying everywhere as Rong lost control. Skidding against water like a skipping stone as his mind refused to stop working in its pursuit.

DESTROY IT!

The dagger in the golem's neck heeded the simple command and wrenched itself from its prison. Twisting so as it drilled right through the remaining thick of neck. Four other daggers came flying drilling their own holes into the chassis and turning quickly for a second round, third, fourth and even fifth. The five daggers repeatedly stabbed the dagger without fail.

"L-Laura.", LingYin called out to her assigned partner.

"What is it LingYin?", returned the white haired girl.

"Are you sure this guy needs saving?"

Laura's face betrayed nothing. Her expression hardened as a soldier's should be. But the slightest dip of her lips proved her discomfort to the situation. "Yes, he definitely needs it now. If he's still alive from that last suicide attack.".

@zero: I fgured hypersonic was pushing it so I contemplated supersonic. But I was sure even Akatsubaki could pull that off and be absolutely safe. Mach 3 or 4 just sounded bleh. Hypersonic just seemed to click with the requirements. Fast and suicidal. Rong should be dead, but the physical reinforcement system keeps him alive... though barely.

@ Demi
Well, Author never really gave us exact figure, the only clue found is that Akatsubaki climb 300 m in a brief moment in the novel, and anime depict sonic boom, so that means somewhere between 10-20g. Remember that it's said repeatedly in the novel that supersonic combat are special.

Gospel's maximum speed: 1380 km/h, a little over Mach 1....

EDIT: which doesn't make sense given how WK portrayed...

@ Eras
Depends, sure thing it actual cover your body and hair, but it's not like people can keep their face down in all situation, so it's sort of qualify depends on circumstances.

Anyway it's not necessary for Rong to actually achieve hypersonic speeds at that point. "zero to hypersonic in 10" just indicated his acceleration. Also, airdrag and the incomplete PIC copy system was pretty much going to get him dead. Laura's words would be already taking IS class PIC into account.

??? that's wacked. Gospel is barely supersonic but Strike gunner is a high speed package tuned for hypersonic combat. As far as I know IS cover supersonic velocities on a regular basis. Since they can outrun and out maneuver state of the art jets like nothing.

Finally figured out why I couldn't write IS and Fourze xover before. I'm not too strong in writing from the POV of IS side. I seemed to be more comfortable if it's from KR side. Specially since the IS side is basically in mid story already.

I don't think so. The IS support doesn't seem to be a permanent change. Best example of justification of this I can think of is Rin blocking Houki's strike. Ichika states that IS aren't effective until they are properly worn by the pilot. That's why Rin's ability was solely on her own merit and not because of the IS

:|

Ichipedia... the least trustworthy source of information. But it's all I got.

@ Demi
Well, that's stated in the novel, not from Ichika, but by Chifuyu herself based on sensor reading. Also, both Cecilia and Rin is the one explained to ichika that supersonic combat is different than usual fight in the arena, Maya also confirmed it.

Yeah, definitely doesn't makes sense, consistent so far until you think back to White Knigth incident.

Hence I need to build up rules from the ground, that I.S. are limited by altitude than anything else, their worst enemy is none other than air resistance. Hypersonic speed doesn't really hard to attain when you're facing 1% of the usual drag force.

Hmm so I remember the numbers wrong. *shrug* Not like the numbers ever made sense anyway. For me IS already outclass most jets when it comes to speed. Acceleration wise they can go supersonic at a heartbeat.